The first two albums by Liquid Tension Experiment—a frenetic instrumental progressive-metal supergroup featuring members of Dream Theater, King Crimson and Peter Gabriel’s band—arrived in the late ‘90s and attained high status among aficionados of the genre. Now, more than 20 years later, comes the improbable third installment.
Liquid Tension Experiment 3 is a tour de force recorded over two weeks in late summer 2020 after all four original members—drummer Mike Portnoy, guitarist John Petrucci, keyboardist Jordan Rudess and Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick—had self-quarantined. It’s easy to hear the influences from their other bands, but it’s also obvious that nobody else sounds like these four guys in the same room together.
The eight songs on LTE3 include four fully composed tracks, a pair of duets, one on-the-fly jam and a playful cover of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” the album’s longest track at more than 13 minutes. (A bonus disc contains five additional tracks.) Chaotic (“Hypersonic”), melodic (“Beating the Odds”) and psychedelic (the mammoth Portnoy-Levin duet “Chris & Kevin’s Amazing Odyssey”), LTE3 is a master class in musical precision and execution that puts the “super” back in “supergroup.”
